Wednesday, 11 September 2013

Golden Quotebook: Saki on Turkish Baths and Massacres

On this
momentous date, when we commemorate both the attack on the Twin Towers twelve
years ago and General Pinochet’s coup d’état
of 1973 in Chile (yes, indeed: him that ‘brought Democracy to Chile’ in the
Iron Lady’s immortal words), it is perhaps a useful thing to remind ourselves
that not all evil actually has a purpose. Or, in the words of the inimitable
Hector Hugh Munro:

Spayley had grasped the fact that people will do things from a sense of
duty which they would never attempt as a pleasure. There are thousands of
respectable middle-class men who, if you found them unexpectedly in a Turkish
bath, would explain in all sincerity that a doctor had ordered them to take Tur­kish
baths; if you told them in return that you went there because you liked it,
they would stare in pained wonder at the frivolity of your motive. In the same
way, whenever a massacre of Armenians is reported from Asia Minor, every one
assumes that it has been carried out "under orders" from somewhere or
another; no one seems to think that there are people who might like to
kill their neighbours now and then.